Life In Taloqan

Dear Everyone,

Well, I’m trying to regular about these letters, but I lose track of when I’ve sent the last one, and the desperate pace of this work makes the memory of such details elusive. Forgive me if I repeat things, and just enjoy them twice - they probably made a big impression on me.

So far, I’ve been giving you samplings from my journal, in which, up to about a week ago, I was very descriptive and eloquent. That, unfortunately, has changed recently. Witness a typical entry from the last few days:

"Almost feel like crying. PL left me with a final report to do for UNICEF
And I know almost nothing about it. Spent all afternoon trying to figure
out what was going on. I need to go home. I have a headache. It’s been 10
hours in this office."

So. I will leave this sparse, bleak material in the journal, and tell you a bit about everyday life in Afghanistan. Sound good? Good.

I’ll start with my room. The office I mentioned above is about a 6-minute walk away from the guesthouse where I stay. The first part of that walk is along an SFL-built road, and the rest is in the mud that passes for a street here. When I first arrived, I noticed that Afghans wear their pants very short, high above the ankles. Now I know why. The guesthouse is really a compound, which is also a big thing here. The public spaces and private spaces are clearly separated, usually by walls. So inside the walls here there is a yard and a garden, with the buildings to one side. There are four rooms here, and a washroom. You actually wash in the washroom; other business is done 84 steps away, across the yard in the latrine. I never have to remember to put the seat down for the ladies in the latrine, partly because there are very few ladies, and mostly because there is no seat. What there is is a deep pit covered by a slab of concrete, and a hole cut in the concrete. You get good at squatting. If this sounds rustic, please know that it is preferable to plumbing, because plumbing is technology, and technology rarely works here. Believe me; you'd rather have a hole in the ground than backed up pipes in this country. I’ll get to the washroom later.

Back to my room. This I can take from the journal:

I am writing this in my room at the guesthouse. Out of my window, there is a leafless tree, a small vineyard, the wall of the compound, and the grey sky. It has been raining. If there were no clouds, I would be able to see the mountain, probably fresh with snow after all the rain we've had here. My room is small, about ten feet by fifteen. It has no stove, but the other room was more of a hallway with a bed, so I chose this one. The others have round stoves that burn wood at a terrific rate. My room is cold. A bare bulb hangs from the ceiling and flickers along with the struggling generator. The floor is cement covered with a red carpet. The walls are mud brick and whitewashed, with coat hooks nailed into them. My bed is two heavy mattresses, called toshaks, on the floor and a couple of Japanese sleeping bags. Those Japanese! These bags consist of two panels, a top and a bottom, which zip together (and completely apart), leaving a healthy zippered, and thus drafty, perimeter around the whole outside of your body. There are shelves set into the wall beside my bed and a piece of loose wallpaper hangs behind them to hide the exposed bricks. The paper is patterned in tiles with a garish design of lilac and pink carnations on a red and white background. I can't believe wallpaper like this exists. All my things are on these shelves, the books and the pictures at the top. Above me, the ceiling is made of straw mats supported by round rough beams about the thickness of a leg, set crosswise from wall to wall. It has just begun to leak. Around here you catch the drips in cups and buckets until rainy season is over and then you pack more mud on top of the leaky mud and call it a day.

Sometimes we take showers. Showers here are done by lighting a fire under a small water tank, heating the water and then mixing hot with cold in a bucket to get the desired temperature. you then stand in a recessed basin in the cement floor, use a big cup to scoop water from the bucket and pour it over yourself, soap up, and rinse again from the bucket. It’s quite nice actually, because the hot water tank heats up the little washroom very well and you don't have to step out of a hot shower into a cold room. You just dry off in the heated room, dress, and leave.

Most of the time we are picked up by trucks and the drivers take us to the office. At night, the drivers are off so it is up to us to drive. All the trucks are Toyotas. I think every vehicle in Afghanistan is a Toyota. Diesel Toyotas. In theory, one drives on the right hand side here, but a good rule of thumb to follow here is drive where you can. This includes the right, the left, and off the road all together. Other good rules are:

1. Assume the right of way
2. Pass everyone
3. Honk when doing 1 and 2, and at all other times
4. Ignore the guys with signs
5. Obey the guys with guns

One of the trucks I drive sometimes is a relic with a gearshift that has more play in it than a first string quarterback and a reverse gear that I swear changes position. It is also a right-hand drive, which is jolly good fun. Sometimes I wonder why the guy beside me isn't driving, and then I remember that I am. There are an equal number of right and left hand drives on the vehicles here. It seems to make little difference to the Afghans. And no matter what side your wheel is on, you can be sure that each seat, including your own, will have two or more people in it. A motorcycle is a family vehicle, and a bicycle is good for three. They trick out their bikes here with reflectors, plastic roses, streamers, and the plastic wrap they are sold with. Motorcycles are operated with what seems like a specific intent to wait until the last minute and then gun it through the six inches remaining between passing cars. Other modes of transport include horses, donkeys, and carts pulled by horses or donkeys. You can walk, too, especially if you are shouting and herding a river of sheep through all of the above.

This is a man's world. Actually, it is probably what Neverland really looks like, after all those lost boys never grew up. You eat with your hands, sleep in your clothes, get dirty and don't change, wipe your nose with your scarf, the whole world is your bathroom, and the women aren't allowed to talk to you. Until you get inside. Then it's the women's world, I’m told. I’ve never seen the women's world, and I won't ever, unless I marry into it. But outside the women are covered up with burqas in blue and white, like children dressed as ghosts for Halloween. The men have an Old Testament dress code, with turbans, loose clothes, and blankets wrapped around them and tossed over the shoulder. The color of choice, and practicality, is brown. If you're really flashy, you wear grey. Children are dressed in the brightest colours allowed by natural law, and they are everywhere. As young as six, they are leading donkeys, herding sheep, digging gravel into potholes, racing sticks in the ditchwater, playing hopscotch, throwing rocks at each other, selling bread, ploughing fields, washing cars, pulling carts, collecting water, and chasing foreigners. School starts in two weeks, so I hope some of them will be in school as well, the little rascals.

Children are probably the most beautiful and heartbreaking thing about this country. With bright clothes and brighter smiles, with grim faces and silent trudging, with kites and rocks for toys, they are like treasures covered in dirt.

They are also the future. This country is 50% children. Pray they last.

Thanks to all of you who remember me and them. Special thanks to those of you who wrote me. I will get back to you personally. Peace to all. -rjs